Securing the Supplies of Fossil Fuels - Energy and Climate: How to Achieve a Successful Energy Transition - page 89

7
Securing the Supplies of Fossil
Fuels
The role of fossil fuels
While our aim is to reduce as rapidly as possible the share of fossil fuels in
the world primary energy supply, substantially reducing the amount of
energy consumed and deploying renewable energy sources will take time.
What can the role of fossil fuels be during this transition period and how
can they contribute to help in achieving a transition aimed at their
disappearance?
Furthermore, is the objective to widen and diversify fossil fuel sources
reconcilable with the need to reduce CO 2 emissions? Considering only
coal, its proven reserves presently amount to around 900 billion tonnes,
whichmeans that 3700 billion tonnes of CO 2 will be produced, if this coal
is consumed. This is much more than the total emissions of carbon which
might be acceptable during the next fifty years, if we want to keep to the
objective of a mean temperature increase below 2 C.
Three reasons have to be taken into account for maintaining substantial
efforts in the area of fossil fuels:
- As has already been mentioned, fossil fuels will keep a significant
share of the primary energy supply during the whole transition
period. Even if their consumption is greatly reduced, it will be
necessary to satisfy the demand, without any sudden breakdown in
supplies. The problem to solve is not related to the absolute level of